


and when you think of me, am i the best you've ever had?

by opaldemencha



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: F/M, i didnt get no sleep cause of yall, yall aint gonna get no sleep cause of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 19:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12175578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opaldemencha/pseuds/opaldemencha
Summary: Harry huffs out a laugh and a smile that he doesn’t recognize spreads across his face. “Comforting existentialism?”“Yep”, she replies, unfazed. “You should give it a try.”Harry/Ginger Ale





	and when you think of me, am i the best you've ever had?

**Author's Note:**

> here i go again......... shipping rarepairs......... sav e me

This is how it begins.

 

i.  
The wedding is beautiful, undoubtedly. Harry scans the guests in gathered at the reception, sipping his martini slowly. He recognizes some of the people, once marks, from missions past. He sees Eggsy and his beautiful Tilde twirl around happily, and feels something strong and happy fill his chest. It feels huge and undeniable. It feels like pride.

In his thirty years of service to Kingsman, he has never felt more accomplished than right now. 

The chair next to him is pulled back, and a laughing Agent Whiskey, fresh from dancing with Tequila, seats herself next to him. She takes a sip of her previously abandoned drink and eyes him shrewdly. “Not much of a dancer, Mr. Hart?” she asks, eyes glinting in the soft lighting. 

“I’m afraid I only dance when missions demand it, Agent Whiskey”, he smiles back. She nods and responds “That makes two of us. Of course, it’s hard to say no to Tequila at a party.” There’s something in her answer that piques his interest, although he can’t place his finger on why. “Forgive me if I’m being terribly rude, but are the two of you-?”  
Whiskey seems to understand where his question is going and cuts him off, laughing slightly. “Nope. No. Never. We-uh. We trained together, different departments of course, and we’ve just been close since. You know better than anyone that you stick to the friends you make in this field.”

Harry nods, thinking of a lush green forest in Cambodia and a beloved voice singing itself to sleep. 

ii.  
Of fucking course her first solo mission would end up like this: her in Kingsman’s hospital with a broken leg and a smattering of broken ribs. Ironically enough it’s Harry who catches her just as she slides to the ground in front of Kingsman’s shiny new premises, almost passed out from blood loss, but still (barely, the snide perfectionist voice in her head adds) victorious. 

Their positions now reversed, she blinks up at Harry from her hospital bed, reading a battered copy of The God of Small Things. She can’t read without her glasses on, but she’d recognize the cover anywhere. She must be slightly dopey from the painkillers she’s been given or the headache she has must be making her loopy because the first words she manages are, “If you’re happy in a dream, does it count?” Harry’s face snaps up from the book to focus on her. He smiles at her in surprise. “You like this one?” he asks, gesturing at the book in his lap.

She tried to nod, which, big mistake, because her head feels like it weighs a ton at the moment. She settles for a croaky hum of acknowledgement. Harry looks at her critically, warm brown eyes trained on her. “Good to see you awake, Agent Whiskey. Te- Agent Caradoc, excuse me- has been beside himself. He’s only just stepped out for a wash and dinner. I could text him to let him know that you’re awake.”

“No, don’t worry about it”, she replies, trying to ignore the now throbbing pain above her left eyebrow. “I’m sorry if he made you stay here, or anything-“

“Absolutely not” he says, slightly sternly. “You nursed me back to health after that ghastly business in Kentucky, surely it’s only right that I return the favor? Furthermore, we agents must always look out for one another, must we not?”  
We agents. Somehow, even though she’s now doubting whether she was ever cut out to be an agent at all, the phrase makes her feel better.  
Somehow, she’s sure Harry knows this. 

iii.

A conversation about The God of Small Things turns into one about Indian politics, into one about the economy, and swivels back into one about literature, except this time, they’ve moved on to modern literature and their favorites. 

“If we’re talking books with unreliable narrators, for me, it’s gotta be Gone Girl”, Whiskey says. Harry raises his eyebrows in response. “I would have assumed something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez to suit your refined tastes, Agent”, he replies, teasing. She scrunches her nose defiantly, eyes glittering behind her spectacles. “Gone Girl is refined, Arthur. Besides, isn’t there something refreshing about reading about what a horror story marriage is from a woman’s point of view rather than a man’s?” Harry’s answering laugh is drowned out by Caradoc’s loud, disbelieving “You’re fucking awake?” as he slams into the room.

iv.

She ends up staying in Kingsman for another month before being cleared for active duty, which she spends alternatively being fussed over by Tequila (always Tequila to her), and skulking around Kingsman HQ, surveying their tech, and somehow always ending up in Harry’s office, discussing books and classic movies for hours on end. She returns to Kentucky with Harry Hart’s contact freshly saved in her phone. Looking back however, she never thought it would end like this.  
She’d always assumed Snapchat was a younger man’s game, but Harry seems to have taken to it quite well. She gets snaps from him daily; pictures of his admittedly delicious breakfasts, his dog, piles of paperwork that he encounters daily as Arthur with the caption “How did you ever deal with this at your old position?” and she doesn’t have the heart to tell him that even as Ginger Ale she’d had an exponentially more exciting job than his. 

She responds with snaps of her own life: her cats, her baking (she almost never has time for it but when she bakes, he’s the first one to know), Champ napping on the sofa in the back of the underground library with his hat hiding his face, pictures of books she encounters in her travels that she thinks he might like. The warmth she feels whenever she sees his name light up her screen is welcome, comforting. 

Even across the Atlantic. 

v.  
He knows it’s 2 AM in Kentucky, but he needs to- he must talk to someone-

“Hello?” her voice is bleary on the other end, likely roused from sleep.  
“Hello? Whiskey?” he asks, voice barely making it without breaking.  
“Harry?” she instantly sounds more awake at the sound of his voice. “Is everything all right?”

And he’s off. He tells her about the reappearance of Merlin and Roxy in his life. How, once the sheer happiness at seeing them again had worn off he was immediately on guard again. How the constant cycle of losing and returning friends was being to fuck with his head, beginning to wear him so thin, he felt as though he might break apart. How he doesn’t know how much longer he can do this for. Bless her, she lets him speak, interjecting gently at certain parts, and when he finishes, she is silent for a long moment. 

“Did you know” she starts, “that my real name is Genevieve?”  
The declaration lands like another blow to Harry’s already frayed nerves: a reminder that he lives a half-life, the life of a spy, a life that he sometimes feels is rapidly spiraling out of his control. He’s known her- Genevieve- for two years and only now knows her name.  
Before he can even begin to articulate any of this, she cuts smoothly across him. “My mom named me Genevieve because where she grew up in Haiti, all the rich kids had names like that. Genevieve. Jean-Luc. The most pretentious shit.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, trusting her to get to the point. In his mind’s eye he can see her, dark eyes wide and imploring as she speaks to him. 

“The point is, she named me that because she wanted me to be to be lucky. She wanted me to have what she always wanted as a child. Safety, security, money. People always like to say that money can’t buy happiness but believe me, when it was just me and my mom freezing our asses off in the Bronx in a shitty apartment winter after winter, money buys you something a lot more valuable: heating and an edible meal.”

Harry leans back, the sound of her voice calming him. 

“Now I have more money than I know what to do with, and guess what? I don’t even use my given name when working. There’s no difference between Genevieve Chery and Agent Fucking Whiskey if you ask me.

What I’m saying is, Harry, life can throw you the craziest shit-“ he raises his eyebrows because he knows she seldom curses out loud- “and you’ve just got to deal. You can plan all you want, and try to carve your future out in stone, but those plans really mean less than nothing in the end. Instead of letting this get to you, you should get comfortable with it. Existentialism can be comforting sometimes too, you know.”

Harry huffs out a laugh at that and a smile that he doesn’t recognize spreads across his face. “Comforting existentialism?”  
“Yep”, she replies, unfazed. “You should give it a try.”

vi.

They’re about to eat some orgasmic three dollar tacos at a stand in Cabo but she catches herself and sends a snap of her food to Harry. Tequila looks up from where he’d been inhaling his food and asks, a strange look in his eye, “Are you sending that to Harry?”

She feels her cheeks heat unfamiliarly. “So what if I am? We’re friends.”

He smirks at her annoyingly and takes another bite of his taco. Chewing slowly and swallowing before saying in a twang that a year and a half of working at Kingsman hasn’t been able to force out of him, “I grew up on a cattle farm, Gen. I know bullshit when I see it.”

vii.  
There are truly few things as beautiful as Paris in the spring. Harry knows this, and in his utterly relaxed state, his guard is down and is barreled into a side road off rue de la Huchette and pinned with surprising strength against the back of a building by a smaller, very familiar warmth he identifies as Agent Whiskey. She looks up at him and he notes immediately the changes he’s missed since the last time he’d seen her. Her hair is longer, nearly chin length and messy presumably from running, she looks significantly sleep deprived, and there are several long scratches running down the length of her arm. Otherwise, she looks unharmed and the sight of her causes Harry’s stomach to flutter. 

A recent development, he thinks. Must explore that later.

“Why is it, whenever we encounter each other, Agent Whiskey, you are always injured?”

She looks up at him, unamused and panting, and oh the image she makes with her cheeks flushed and breath heavy is so appealing he may need to just adjust himself just so-  
A cacophony of footsteps clatter next to them and she kisses him forcefully. Harry’s thoughts fizzle and his brain is silent for the first time in- well. Ever. 

She pulls back and grins triumphantly at him pulling out a flash drive from her pocket.  
“Got it”, she says smugly. He blinks at her (rather stupidly, in his opinion), before she drags him away, cautiously, to make sure they aren’t being followed, back out onto the street.

viii.  
The scratches turn out to be shallow but still painful, although the remainder of her time in Paris is spent relaxing. She ends up having to stay in Harry’s hotel room, hurriedly checking out of her own (compromised) quarters. He chivalrously kips on an extra mattress for a few nights which, to her, is unfair. It’s his vacation and she technically gatecrashed, so she should take the shitty mattress, but he refuses point-blank. 

That night, they have dinner at a little bistro and walk along the Pont de la Concorde. Paris shines brightly on behind them. The chill of winter isn’t full gone, although the spring, as Harry keeps reminding her, does wonders in enhancing the city’s natural beauty. As always with Harry, she talks and talks and somehow never runs out of things to say, although she wants to say only one thing tonight but can’t find the words. 

Instead, she turns around to face him. He looks back at her: guileless, handsome, smiling slightly. His hair is ruffled by the slightly breeze and she wants to kiss him.

So she does. 

It’s a proper kiss this time: not a diversionary tactic, not a fumbling touch of lips, but a real kiss that lights her up and warms her all the way down to her curling toes in her boots.  
She pulls back and he blinks open a few seconds later, as though savoring it, and she has never felt more powerful or more vulnerable than it that moment. Harry smiles at her and takes her hand. Their palms are warm against each other despite the bite of cold in the air. 

Neither of them uses the spare mattress that night.

**Author's Note:**

> y'all it's 2:46 AM im sleep


End file.
